A chair

... after Gerhard Richter:

Labyrinth

Drawings inspired by Michelangelo Pistoletto's cardboard labyrinth at his exhibition The Mirror Of Judgement in London's Serpentine Gallery this summer:

Wallace's industrial textures

Toronto's Show & Tell Gallery has been showing and telling high quality works by American artists, especially from New York.  Their current group show features works on paper by Brooklyn based Ryan Wallace.  Drawing inspiration from science and technology, Wallace's geometric compositions are collages of beautiful cold-coloured industrial textures.

Wallace at Show & Tell, Toronto 2011:

Bauhaus + constructivism @ Neue Nationalgalerie

Para-Bauhaus El Lissitzky at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin 2011:

Bauhaus Meister László Moholy-Nagy at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin 2011:

Vorticist drawings

Vorticism is the Brit's answer to modernism during World War I.  The show The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World I saw at Tate Britain this past summer is both educational and inspirational.  Works by vorticist pioneers shown at the exhibition are full of futurist dynamism characteristic of this short-lived movement.  Since photography was not allowed at the exhibition, I had to do some quick sketches on site.

Edward Wadsworth:

Frederick Etchells:

Jessica Dismorr:

Colour field objects

Instantly lovable hard-edge colour field objects by two masters, Ellsworth Kelly and John McCracken ...

Kelly at K20, Düsseldorf 2011:

McCracken at MoMA, New York 2011:

Mangold @ Hallen für Neue Kunst

Hallen für Neue Kunst in Schaffhausen Switzerland has been the highlight of my annual European trip this past summer.  I have been thinking of going there for a few years but have not been able to fit it into my previous itineraries until this year.  My anticipation was met with total satisfaction.  Owning and showing large-scale works by Carl Andre, Joseph Beuys, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Jannis Kounellis, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Robert Mangold, Mario Merz, Bruce Nauman, Robert Ryman and Lawrence Weiner, the Hallen's collection of minimalist/conceptual contemporary art is among the most prominent in the world.

Robert Mangold's paintings are what I found the most impressive at the Hallen.  His use of simple forms with mathematical clarity, though quiet and restrained on the surface, is articulate and powerful.  I rank Mangold as high as Max Bill among all favourite artists of mine.

Sun x2

Now that our brief Canadian summer is quickly receding, we certainly need more of this ...

Caribou's original from his 2010 album Swim:

Video from MyRobotHand2's youtube channel

Altrice's Only What You Gave Me Remix:

Video from SickMixxxes' youtube channel

Stiff As A Board, Light As A Feather

I am getting more and more disenchanted with the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) every year.  As it gets bigger commercially, it becomes less and less appealing to me.  This year I decided not to check out their program any more.  I did bump into Nicholas & Sheila Pye's contribution of short films to the TIFF, Stiff As A Board, Light As A Feather, at Birch Libralato Gallery this past weekend.  Like the Pyes' previous films, their latest works are equal doses of otherworldly beauty and melancholy.

Still image from their film The Bird Watcher:

Communications 2

I have posted my drawings of it before.  I am now posting these pictures of the constructivist outdoor sculpture Communications in downtown Toronto by Haydn Llewellyn Davies:

Laliberté's floating lines and planes

I saw Colette Laliberté's eye-catching constructivist paintings of floating lines and planes at Toronto's Wynick/Tuck Gallery last week.  Her previous site specific installations, which I didn't get a chance to see, would have been even more brilliant.

Laliberté at Wynick/Tuck, Toronto 2011:

She Sparkled + Let 1/2 Her Spirit Out*

Thrush Holmes is one of my favourite Toronto artists.  His provocative works, often in bold strokes of oil paint, spray paint and/or neon, are shown at his own studio/gallery Thrush Holmes Empire.

Holmes at Thrush Holmes Empire, Toronto 2011:

*She Sparkled + Let 1/2 Her Spirit Out is one of Holmes' neon works.

Strunz: crystallization of space, time and dream

I was first impressed by Katja Strunz's works more than a year ago at Camden Art Centre in London.  So when I saw her works again unexpectedly at a group show in Berlin's Daimler Contemporary, I was totally excited.  Strunz's angular wall reliefs and paper collages effortlessly crystallized the constructivist space, time and dreams (Zeittraum*).

Strunz at Daimler, Berlin 2011:

*The German word Zeittraum has appeared in one of Strunz's earlier works: Zeit-Raum (German) = space-time (English), Traum (German) = dream (English).

Morris over Deutschland

Sarah Morris is one of the few artists whose works have appeared in multiple locations I have visited this summer.  She is definitely among my favourite artists currently, not because she's a fellow alumna of mine though.

Morris at VitraHaus, Weil am Rhein 2011:

Morris at Capitain Petzel, Berlin 2011:

Morris at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg 2011:

Numbers + Pocket Calculator

... from one of my most favourite of all time, Kraftwerk's 1981 album Computer World:

Videos from scatmanjohn3001's youtube channel

M = 24N + 7

Summer is over.  Can't believe I haven't posted anything on math for three months.  So here it is ...

Further to my previous post on Mersenne primes, here is another neat fact about these special prime numbers.  All Mersenne primes M, except for the first one, are congruent to 7 modulo 24.  In other words, they can be written in the form M = 24N + 7 for some integer N.  For example,

M3 = 7 = 24 x 0 + 7
M5 = 31 = 24 x 1 + 7
M7 = 127 = 24 x 5 + 7
M13 = 8191 = 24 x 341 + 7

Grey monochromes Hamburg

Perfect for a grey day like today ...

Gerhard Richter at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg 2011:

Sherrie Levine and Joost van Oss at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg 2011:

Christopher Wool at Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2011:

Thorsten Brinkmann at Kunsthaus Hamburg, 2011:

Feininger's cityscapes

It's not that I don't like the countryside.  While everybody's got away to their cottages for the long weekend,  I'd rather stay in the city, where I really do belong.  German-American painter Lyonel Feininger also belonged to the city.  He was born and grew up in New York City and has lived and worked in Berlin for long periods of time.  This Bauhaus master's cityscape paintings capture light in the most distinctive cubist way.

Feininger at Pinakothek der Moderne, München 2010:

Feininger at MIA (Minneapolis Institute of Arts), 2010:

Feininger at Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis 2010:

Feininger at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin 2011:

Fetting's cityscapes

Having lived all my life in (major) cities, I have always found myself fascinated by things urban and architectural.  Although I was not too crazy about his neo-expressionist figurative works, Rainer Fetting's cityscapes of Berlin in intense colours are so easily likable.

Fetting at Berlinische Galerie, Berlin 2011:

Besides his paintings, Fetting's cityscape drawings are equally impressive.

Fetting at Berlinische Galerie, Berlin 2011:

Duncan

I first saw Howard Podeswa's works in Toronto's Peak Gallery a few years ago.  When I visited Wynick/Tuck Gallery today, I was delighted to see paintings from Podeswa's recent Duncan series, which depict the minimalist urban landscape of rooftop machineries as seen from the artist's studio window on Duncan Street in downtown Toronto.

Podeswa at Wynick/Tuck, Toronto 2011:

The other Vitra

Completed in 1994, Frank Gehry's Vitra Center in Birsfelden, a suburb of Basel, is the headquarters of designer furniture manufacturer Vitra.  It is a hidden gem often overlooked by architecture enthusiasts when visiting Basel.